1. Field
One embodiment of the invention relates to a broadcast receiver and a control method therefor which allows received broadcast contents to be recorded on a digital recorder and player over an in-home network by way of example.
2. Description of the Related Art
As is well known, such a broadcast receiver as described above is adapted to temporarily store received broadcast contents in an output buffer. The broadcast contents stored in the output buffer are read every predetermined (preset) amount of data, then transferred to a digital recorder and player, such as a hard disk drive (HDD), over the in-home network and recorded on it.
With this type of broadcast receiver, when the speed of transferring data to the digital recorder and player becomes lowered due to the network load conditions in the process of recording received broadcast contents on the recorder and player, the output buffer may overflow. In that event, the recording process will end in failure.
Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 11-191884 discloses a configuration such that, in a network system composed of a video server of stream type and a terminal computer of file input/output type, when the remaining capacity of the output buffer has reduced less than a predetermined value, the terminal computer issues to the server a stream type of request to temporarily stop sending.
However, the above Patent Publication is irrelevant to the problem that, when broadcast contents received by a broadcast receiver are transferred over an in-home network to a digital recorder and player for recording, the output buffer may overflow due to the load conditions of the network to cause the recording process to end in failure.